Consumer Protection Bill 2019 approved
The Indian Parliament has passed the landmark Consumer Protection Bill, 2019 which aims to provide the timely and effective administration and settlement of consumer disputes. Key Highlights of the New Act:
- Covers E-Commerce Transactions
- Enhancement of Pecuniary Jurisdiction
- E-Filing of Complaints
- Establishment of Central Consumer Protection Authority
- Product Liability & Penal Consequences
- Unfair Trade Practices
- Penalties for Misleading Advertisement
- Provision for Alternate Dispute Resolution
Commerce Ministry to soon come out with new foreign trade policy
The Commerce Ministry will soon come out with a new foreign trade policy, which provides guidelines and incentives for increasing exports for the next five financial years 2020-25. The Ministry is giving final touches to the new policy as the validity for the old one will end on March 31, 2020. The Ministry’s arm Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) is formulating the policy.
The new policy would focus on simplifying procedures for exporters and importers, besides providing incentives to boost outbound shipments. At present, tax benefits are provided under the ‘merchandise export from India’ scheme (MEIS) for goods and ‘services export from India’ scheme (SEIS).
In the new policy, changes are expected in the incentives given to goods as the current export promotion schemes are challenged by the US in the dispute resolution mechanism of WTO. In this backdrop, the government is recasting the incentives to make them compliant with global trade rules.
DGFT has issued followings trade notices keeping in mind the review of the existing Foreign Trade Policy :
Smart City Mission 2.0 likely in 2020
After first Smart Cities Mission for 100 cities, the government will expand the Smart Cities Mission to all 4,000 cities in the country. The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA), the nodal department for Smart City Mission, is set to roll out smart city 2.0 mission in 2020. The central government’s second version of the smart city initiative will be rolled out across the country, said a government official.
The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) is also looking at alternative funding mechanisms such as pool finance, fund of fund approach, bonds, fiscal money, monetisation of unused land and tapping foreign capital.
The mission has started rating the existing projects under five parameters - planning, technology, governance, services and finance, along with climate sensitive action and ease of living sensitive action. So far, about 10% of the planned projects have been completed in the past three years.
Smart City: Report Card on the Progress made
Under Smart City Mission, projects worth over Rs 2.05 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro) are proposed in 100 cities and a significant progress has been made in terms of implementation of these projects, the Economic Survey 2018-19 said.
The strategic components of this mission are area-based development involving city improvement (retrofitting), city renewal (redevelopment), city extension (greenfield development) and a Pan-city development in which smart solutions are applied covering larger parts of the city.
- The 100 cities under the mission have proposed to execute 5,151 projects worth 2,05,018 crore (~26 bn Euro) in five years from their respective dates of selection.
- Financial innovation is in-built in the design of the programme. The distribution of funding from the central and state government is Rs 93,552 crore (~12 bn Euro) (45%) and funds from PPP is Rs 41,022 crore (~5 bn Euro) (21%).
Smart city mission put on fast track
The Centre has got into a mission rethink mode to speed up the implementation of projects under the Smart City Mission. In the fifth and final year of ‘Smart City Mission’, the Centre has set a new target - Mission Rs 2 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro). With the current trajectory of project tendering and completion, the government would have awarded contracts till 2022. However, in the last mile, the ministry of housing and urban affairs has decided to issue tenders for all projects under the mission over the next six months, that is till March 2020. The projects would be worth Rs 2 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro).
As the mission would complete five years on June 25, 2020, the Centre has set another target for its fifth anniversary celebrations - to award all works and begin work on projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore (~26 bn Euro) on the ground.
The government has invited proposals from entities for the deployment of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in big and smart cities. Proposals are invited from entities that intend to develop EV charging infrastructure in million-plus cities as per the 2011 census; and smart cities as notified by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Ministry of Heavy Industries.
"Initially, 1,000 EV charging stations are earmarked for deployment through this EOI. These charging stations will be sanctioned to different states/cities/entities after evaluation of the proposals received under this EOI," the Heavy Industries Ministry said.
It further advised that to the extent possible charging station should be connected with 'grid-connected solar power plant' of required capacity as per MNRE guidelines so as to ensure grid stability and green energy for electric vehicles.
The National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) 2020 will be implemented in phases based on the feedback from auto industry. The Minister of State for Heavy Industries promised all support to the auto industry on policy matters to ensure smooth and efficient transformation of the automotive industry from internal combustion (IC) to electric powertrain.
NEMMP 2020 is a mission document providing the vision and the roadmap for the faster adoption of electric vehicles and their manufacturing in the country. This plan has been designed to enhance national fuel security to provide affordable and environmentally friendly transportation and to enable the Indian automotive industry to achieve global manufacturing leadership.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has issued guidelines for 5G trials across all available spectrum bands indicating to allocate up to 400 MHz of radio waves for experiments. The DoT has fixed a uniform fee of INR 5,000 (~64 Euro) for the trial licence. However, its validity will range between 3 month and 2 years, depending on the purpose for which the trial is being conducted.
The government has plans to conduct spectrum auction for 5G services by the end of this year to enable the roll-out of commercial services using the technology in 2020.
Indian entities involved in R&D, manufacturing, telecom operators and academia for the purpose of R&D and experimentation can get licence for a period of "up to two years, renewable on case to case basis by WPC, subject to truncation to prevent interference to licensed operations".
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has sought inputs from select stakeholders on its draft data protection Bill. MEITY, in a letter sent has sought clarifications on issues such as data localisation and ways to govern non-personal data, including anonymised, community and ecommerce data.
MeitY has sought inputs on the scope of the data authority and obligations for the data fiduciary. It also asked stakeholders for feedback on the “contours of a policy that should govern non-personal data” and whether there was a case to mandate free access to such data. The Bill would focus only on personal data of citizens and that MeitY was not looking to expand that to include non-personal data. MeitY is not holding “any fresh consultations” on the Data Protection Bill. No industry association or company has been contacted and only individual opinions have been sought, the official clarified.
MEITY may come up with a report on non-personal-community, anonymised and ecommerce - data held by companies, including Uber, Google and Amazon, to be used to chalk out a policy on nonpersonal data regulation. The government may also consider leaving it to the ministries or regulators to define which kind of data should come under the purview of such a policy. This comes after the latest round of select stakeholder consultation over the draft Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill, in which the government has also sought opinions on the contours of a policy for non-personal data, besides feedback on issues such as data localisation.